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Writer's pictureElise Guay

soundscapes // sound effects & recording

I started off by focusing on how to make the sound effects that I needed given my limited range of equipment, and using what I had around the house. This was a particularly fun part of this project because I got to use my imagination while following along with my cue sheet, visualizing what I could use for each sound, the timing, etc. I kept track of what I used for each sound, especially in case I had to use an object or prop more than once. I set up in my kitchen, which actually is one of the quietest rooms in my house, I discovered. The backyard has two rows of high hedges which block out a decent amount of road noise, and the kitchen is attached to the neighbors house (who is a very quiet person), and there is another room between the kitchen and street in front.


Of course the most important sound of all would be the film's namesake, the Blob itself. I originally started with a disgusting combination of protein pudding (thanks a lot, Morrison's, I ordered yogurt and they sent me that instead, yuck), jello (sorry, jelly...I'm learning), and mayo. They were all of the squishiest things I could think of. Unfortunately, I did nothing productive and made an absolute mess of my counter.

I genuinely tried multiple applications of the vile concoction; I thought maybe squishing it into a bowl would do it, then I tried a potato masher, a rice mold, a plastic container, and glassware. None of it yielded the results I wanted or needed for the epic entrance of the Blob. So in the spirit of a Foley artist I stood in the middle of my kitchen picking up various objects and items, and I finally landed on half expired oranges. They were a little stiffer than the ripe ones, which helped with multiple uses. I tried squishing it onto the parchment paper and ended up getting too much paper noise so I tried a plate. I got too much plate noise so I tried the straight up counter top and that was the winner. Please enjoy this video of me figuring this out.


The other props I used were two blouses for Jane's dress, a pair of high heels for her shoes, a pair of Chelsea boots for Steve's shoes, a winter jacket for the rustling, a knife (for the knife pull), my stove grate (for the knife pull and fire door rattling), and a fire poker (for when Steve throws whatever that thing from behind the second door is). After assembling my box of props, I attempted to record and turned the Tascam on. I had a complete brain glitch and decided to put it down for the day and try again the next.

I was a little disheartened from the previous day when I set up to record. I thought it would be a simple "plug and play" type of scenario, but when I turned the screen on it was immediate intimidation. I felt like I was looking at coding again for the first time. As always, I was being hard on myself because I'm so incredibly excited about this new path I could take, and felt like I should just be able to DO it. (Picture Shia Leboeuf yelling "DO IT, JUST DO IT"). But, much like anything else that anyone has ever done for the first time, this will require learning, more learning than can be done in the matter of a few days.

I read through the manual and did some Googling, and ended up getting enough of the basics that I felt confident going forward to record. I was definitely still intimidated by all of the functions and didn't dive any deeper into it than getting the basics of what I needed done, but I don't think that was expected of us and I got everything done that I needed to do. I ended up splitting the recording into two days. I kept track of everything by making notes of what each sound was, which file number it was, and made notes of how I felt about each sound. (I'll include photos of my notes below. I was going to type them all out but in reality they weren't really for anyone but me so I could figure out what I was doing.) Day one was a success, but not without its trials. One of the hardest lessons I learned was making sure that the Tascam was recording. Apparently when you press the record button only once, it sets itself up to start recording, and then requires a second press to actually record. Frustratingly, I had several really good takes, and of course they weren't recorded. I tried to look at the silver lining of calling it practice. Another thing I noticed while playing the recordings back, was that it was only playing out of the left speaker. The reason for this, which I later was told during the Support session, was because I had recorded in stereo but it was an easy enough fix to change the recordings to mono, thankfully. I will say, please excuse my absolutely atrocious handwriting. Everyone thinks because I'm a tattoo artist I'd have great handwriting, and I've had clients say, "Just write it out yourself." Yeah. No. You don't want those kinds of problems, buddy.













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