I’m nearing the end of scoring for a movie trailer I imported (just a pet project for practice, nothing pro yet). I’ll post it up here once it’s done.
It’s been a surprisingly fun ride (most of the time), and I thought, ‘hey, maybe someone else could benefit from my impressions, as someone new to this sort of thing.’
And so here we are.
1.
You get to cram a LOT of cool sh*t into a short amount of time. If you love dramatic builds, epic risers and other cool effects, this is where you can pull out all the stops.
2.
It’s HARD to sync the audio with the video. Easily the most frustrating part.
There was a moment earlier on, where I realized I hadn’t set the tempo quite right about halfway through the trailer. One of my impacts was just a little late.
So increased the tempo a little earlier, and sure enough, it lined up fine. But then, I noticed the next sound wasn’t lining up with the scene change.
You can probably guess where this is going.
I tried slowing down the tempo a bit after the first impact to correct the issue, but now none of the scenes seemed to be matching up. Argh!
Long story short, I had to readjust every other accent and effect after that first tempo correction.
By the end of it, I was pretty sure how to never make this mistake again. But that won’t grow back my hair.
The one silver lining was an early suggestion that I stick with percussion when the scenes get really chaotic, instead of trying to force a melody into that mess.
3.
It’s FUN making things sound like other things! Possibly my favourite part of this whole process.
For example, I turned on my mic one day and recorded the traffic sounds outside. Some amplitude modulation, transposition and reverb later, and I had a cool ghostly-sounding pad!
Some of the other sounds came from tapping bowls and pie tins, hitting wrenches with hammers, and even banging plastic trays on the ground.
Plus, it’s cool knowing NO ONE can make a sound that exactly mimics what I’ve created. Well, unless someone breaks into my computer and steals the sample.
4.
Adding sound effects and ambience is also fun, IF they are high quality. To add background sound to the mix, I found myself rooting around on my favourite free sample library.
The problem here is finding something – or a number of somethings – that are realistic and clear, without a lot of signal noise.
Sure you can find a few CC0 samples that sound quiet on their own, but layer them together, and what do you get?
Also, dropping the samples in was just the start: It’s disorienting to see a car drive across to the right, while hearing the car over to the left.
Using volume, reverb, and panning however, I managed to shift the sounds over until they seemed to match the images. Satisfying.
5.
I suspect this kind of work is well suited to visual learners like myself. I mean, I already imagine visuals to go with my music, and it turns out the other way works well too.
At first some scenes seemed completely inexplicable: ‘Wait, we went from stormy skies to… a Ferris wheel?’
As I watched the trailer over, and over, and over however, I started to notice how scenes related to each other, giving me a central theme I to build around the images.
Hair loss aside though (j/k), I will definitely try something like this again in future. In fact, I’ve already come up with a way to use my overactive imagination for another ambitious project.
But now the hour is late, and that is another story, for another day.
Credits:
‘Car Covered With Smoke on Pavement’ by Stephan Müller from Pexels
‘City Lights During Night Time’ by Tomas Wells from Pexels
‘Man Holding Laptop Computer With Both Hands’ by Saksham Choudhary from Pexels
‘Man Showing Distress’ by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels
‘Photo of Ferris Wheel With Neon Lights at Night’ by Guilherme Rossi from Pexels