Original sound design to clip from Alien

[agcohn]

Here is an original sound design we made to a clip from the Director's cut of Alien for a Sound for Film class. It's on Youtube, because I don't know any other places to post clips online: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4ulHyjD8Ec

The video quality of the clip is not that great, as I wanted to get the file size very small. It looks even worse on youtube, but the sound is what's important. The video is relevant only in that it gives the sound meaning.

You must excuse the voice acting. We know that it is easily the weakest part of the project. We couldn't find any decent actors interested in helping out.

There is a small amount of foley in there, and a lot of sound library and midi effects.

 

[Noiz2]

mmm OK,

A quickie critique. For a "big hollywood" style film your track is way too thin. Lots of sort of generic low rumbly swooshy "score" but the specifics are way too thin. There would need to be a lot more Foley. If it moves we should hear it. Steps suit movement etc. Also once were down there and there are these big boiling spots all over... where is the sound? Now at times even in big actioners you end up with total score moments but since this was a sound for film class I would have expected a lot more sound. You also suffered a bit from using commercial libraries. They are used in the big films to a certain extent, but there is also a lot of original sound and when one has to go to libraries for something you usually layer it up. So for instance the atack bit at the end wouldn't sound so much like a bullwhip sound from a western. Maybe some slime on it ?? something. Though you might never get the room sound off of it and that doesn't match the wet cave environment so..??

All in all not bad. Next time try to get something that you could actually use on a reel. Reworking commercially released films is sort of a waste except as a class room exercise because you can't put that stuff on your reel and in fact posting it to YouTube isn't legal so it may get pulled. Much better to get some students film or animation to work against. Hope you had fun.

 

[wabbit]

If it moves we should hear it.

Best foley advice I got from a re-recording mixer friend, "If it is moving, ANYTHING on or off screen, it gets a track."

To build on Noiz's example, the guy is in a space suit, pretty much every move he makes, from bending a finger to swinging his light should get some foley. Artificial breathing helmet equals constant breathing noise as air moving against the helmet.

All these tracks do not have to be blatant, subtle is the key. But it all needs to be in there to give the track a reality.

Overall, while it is not ready for prime time, it is a very good student effort.

Cheers

 

[agcohn]

Thanks guys. The reason we had to chose an actual Hollywood film to do the sound for was that it was supposed to be a professional looking clip with all of the texture and cues that a student film or animation would generally lack.

We didn't want to overdo it with the sound fx, though we were trying to distinguish it from the actual film, which is, at times, almost completely silent. I guess movie silence is different from real silence though.

The "boiling" part you mentioned is the layer of mist the astronaut talks about when he reaches the bottom of the cave. The attack sound at the end is actually two cat attack sounds combined together. The bullwhip sound was actually part of one of the cat attack sounds, and we thought it worked well with the visual of the aliens tail whipping around. Some flanging might have helped, but we didn't discover that until after the project was complete, and the professor told us that flanging would have made the voices sound more like they were coming over a radio.

The sounds of the creature inside of the egg were almost entirely cat sounds. There was some purring that we slowed down a lot and looped over itself. The squishy sounds of the open egg was the sound of a lion eating. The sound of the creature scratching at the egg from the inside was selective parts of the eating sound effect. Otherwise we used some dolphin sound fx when the egg opens up, and the sound of blown fuse when the guy jerks his hand away from the egg.

This wasn't my first choice of video clip, but the one I would have chosen would have been even more recognizeable than Alien. I wanted to do the bus crash from The Fugitive. I thought that it would have provided a lot more sound cues, but the other members of my group wanted to do something a bit more concept driven.

 

[Noiz2]

Thanks guys. The reason we had to chose an actual Hollywood film to do the sound for was that it was supposed to be a professional looking clip with all of the texture and cues that a student film or animation would generally lack.

We didn't want to overdo it with the sound fx, though we were trying to distinguish it from the actual film, which is, at times, almost completely silent. I guess movie silence is different from real silence though..

Well that "silence" I'm sure was covered very completely. Some of the Foley for instance may have been so low that you wouldn't think anyone will hear it. But all those layers give a very complex texture to even very quiet moments, and people notice them if only on a subconscious level. Part of what I was talking about you sort of mentioned in your post. It is VERY rare to the point of almost never happening that a single sound is used for any action. You have to take a thing apart and put in a layer for all the parts. So if you have a whippy sound then you also need a slimy track and a movement track since the whippy bit is more the arm moving through the air, you may also need the sound of the tentacle itself? It's hard to talk about with out actually doing it, maybe the Mvt track wouldn't work or would need to be really low? There is maybe an air sound as it whooshes out of the egg? Some sounds for the egg leaves opening? Footsteps for his reaction, even if we don't see his feet. The sounds of it making contact with his suit. And each of these sounds might have a stack of parts. For instance lets take his proposed footstep at the attack. There is a shoe / boot sound, probably some water or wet surface, probably some rock grit/ scuff, maybe a creek of the suit, maybe a squish of something he steps back on?
It's that kind of depth that is most often missing from low budget films that gives them a sort of empty feeling in the sound track. The most common "fix" in low budget films is to slather some music on top of everything to hide the thinness of the FX track. This sometimes works but usually gets in the way of the film.
So what you have might all have been in a "hollywood" film track but it would have had a lot of company.