Welcome to week 9!
Terrifying and other projects update
I think i have decided that my final project is going to be a headphone and SUBPAC experience, no longer beinh concerned about the visuals (i believe this will take away from the experience). I still want to use a childhood bedroom as the main space because it is somewhere that should feel safe and familiar, but I think that makes it more unsettling when small things start to feel wrong. Rather than showing the listener exactly what they should be scared of, I want them to bring their own fears into the experience and imagine what could be happening around them.
So far, I have started working on the beginning of the experience. At the moment, I am focusing on setting up the bedroom space and creating an uncomfortable atmosphere before anything fully terrifying happens. I want the start to feel grounded and believable, so that when the sound begins to shift or become stranger, it feels like something has changed inside a familiar place.
The project will mainly use headphones and a SUBPAC. The headphones should make the sounds feel close and personal, especially if I use movement, quiet details, and sounds that feel like they are happening just outside of the listener’s awareness. The SUBPAC will add another layer through vibration in the back, so the listener is not only hearing the experience but physically feeling parts of it as well. I want to save this towards the end to help create that final big push for the climax, using it only when necessary
I am using Logic Pro and field recordings to build the soundscape. For the ending, I want to create something much more terrifying than what I currently have, mainly focusing on the more extreme side of terrifying, and less on the subtle side than i originally wanted. I am planning to use Vital to make a sound that feels animalistic, but not like a real animal. I want it to sound like some kind of presence or creature that the listener cannot properly identify.
I plan to route the SUBPAC through a different output to the main dread bed, and have it as another layer in conjunction with the heard subs as well. Experimenting with said SUBPAC is quite an intense feeling, more than i originally would’ve thought, so keeping it till the end of the piece for that final level of terror will work really effectively. I think use it sparingly at the start, and then REALLY bring it in towards the end.
I am still waiting on Jon’s big band jazz piece to come to me for mixing, so i may have to give it a pass for what i was originally planning to do with it, and just focus on the mix for him instead.
Creativity Lecture
The creativity lecture was useful because it talked about switching between exploring ideas and judging them at the right time. I think that relates to this project because I need to let myself try weird, uncomfortable, or even bad-sounding ideas first, especially when I am making the final terror sound. If I judge everything too early, I might only end up using obvious horror sounds. But after exploring, I need to listen back properly and work out what actually creates tension, what feels immersive through the headphones and SUBPAC, and what just sounds too forced. The lecture made me think about not being afraid to experiment first, then being more critical once I have enough material to choose from.
Leave a comment