Not Just Another Bloody Mess

By mboleis | February 8, 2015 |

Creating a story through sounds is not only challenging, but extremely fun! The task was:“Tell a story using nothing but sound effects. There can be no verbal communication, only sound effects. Use at least five different sounds that you find online. The story can be no longer than 90 seconds.” I had such a great time picking out sounds that I thought would work for my story. Since the story had to relate to my character, Blair, I decided to create an accident scene, since she cleans up crime scenes for a living. I used audacity to edit all of the sounds together, and I got all of my sounds from freesound. (This assignment was worth 3.5 stars)

The first thing I did was create a “sound story board” on Word, where I carefully planned what sounds I was going to use. I then put them in an order that made sense, and to which I planned to follow as I layered my pieces together. This really helped me out. I was able to stay organized and focused throughout the entire process of making my story.

I started out by taking the sounds of cars driving by, to give the effect that you are on the street. Everything else involved a lot of cutting and pasting. I really wanted to get the effects to fit together nicely, and some of the sounds were incredibly long. I really only needed a few seconds of them, so I learned that if you found a spot where you wanted to cut the sound, you could press command I, and it would cut it for you! Then you just had to delete what you no longer wanted to use. I then took a car slamming on its breaks, a horn honking, and a car crashing and layered them together to create the car crash effect. The timing of this was imperative. It was really hard to get them all to line up in a way that sounded realistic. The next thing I added was a woman screaming, so we could get the feel that a woman was hit during the crash. After that, we hear the police siren coming, and then a police officer (who has a jingly key belt) running towards her. She is then heard crying, which fades into the sound of the ambulance which has taken her away. Lastly, we hear a sigh (which is from Blair), as well as a hose which wets the road, and finally the sound of sweeping up glass.

Blair cleans so many messes, that some of them are just not interesting to her, especially when she doesn’t find a treasure that she can keep. This story is a pre-curser to one of the many scenes that Blair has found herself working at. Many people wonder how the accidents happen, and this assignment was a way to show what happens before Blair cleans up, and what types of things are considered crimes. She doesn’t just clean up murders, as many people think. There are so many different types of crime, and Blair has seen them all. It is nice to see one that isn’t a grueling bloody murder.

I really enjoyed this assignment, and in reality it wasn’t as difficult as I was expecting. I think my story came out well, and was pretty accurate with my story board. I think I am continuing to become more familiar with audacity, and how it works, which is really exciting. I’m sure as the weeks go on, my audio assignments will continue to get better!

Here is my final project!