Homemade FIreworks! SOUND DESGIN!

Here's our latest youtube video :) It's my first time using visual effects in one actually :) Thanks to my friend Aaron Sorensen who was the one who added them/made it happen.



The point of this blog entry is to go over SOUND DESGIN!

Out of all the youtube videos that I have done this far in my "youtube career", this one has been the most intensive when it comes to sound design. I had to recreate every single sound that is heard in the video. There were NO SOUNDS used from in camera. A lot of times in the video I used sounds that you would think normally wouldn't work, such as a horse trotting, etc. Just to give you an idea of how complicated the sound design was on this video, here is a screen grab from my timeline of the firework video, the focus is on the sound effects that were all added.

There was actually 24 layers of sound effects just in one video clip alone. I had to recreate "pops, snaps, and explosions" throughout the video, and then also recreate sound effects of balls being hit from golf balls, soccer balls, and frisbee throws. Some of these sounds I took out of a sound library, and others I had to recreate on my own.

As far as when I do my own sound effects, to record them I use a Zoom H4N sound recorder, and a Sennheiser MKH-416 shot gun mic. Both of which you can find on B@H website. The setup works great, and they actually use the same mic I use on a lot of independent films as well.

It took me a huge amount of time to decide on buying this mic/sound set up, but after a month of research I found it to be the best for the money. So I would highly recommend it :)

While I am doing the sound design on a video like this, I have already emailed it to my friend Stephen Anderson who composes most of my youtube videos. He is at the same time writing the score for it. Usually when I send these videos off, he only has a day to a week to pull off the music, in this videos case, he had only one day, ha, which I'm always amazed at what he pulls off in such a short time.

He then sends me the track, and then I do the final tweaks to the sound effects based on what he gave me, because all the sounds have already been added, it's mostly just a matter of tweaking levels a little bit.

But as far as hours go into the sound design on a video like this... I would say easily 12-15 hours were spent on recreating the sound effects and tweaking them. Which it's always sad to think so much time went into that for the fact that no one ever knows how much time really goes into it... however if the sounds were not there, people would then notice... so it actually is the biggest payoff when people don't notice the sound design, because then that means it blended in just fine to the movie, and added to it, rather then take away :)

So, there you have it, my two cents on sound design, and why it' important to take the time to get it right, or at least try to get it right :)

I also just discovered a really in depth video on sound design that just came out recently, it was all in regards to the film Transformers 3, and there sound design... which if you haven't seen/heard the movie yet, the sound design is amazing, check out the video right below.