Sound Design after a Nice Conversation.

When visions match

One of the reasons why I decided to work on this film is because the idea has such potential for some interesting combinations of sounds. The director spoke to me about how they thought I would do well with the sound design as they imagined that the film would have a unique sound to it. A mix of insect noises and unique instrumental as the music. This felt like such a good project to be a sound designer. When I spoke to the director it felt like they understood the importance of sound in a movie, and how good at story telling sound can be.

Possible sounds

I immediately started thinking about possible sounds that could be used for the film. My mind went quickly to the sounds that bugs and transformations like that involve; I got excited thinking about all the different sounds. All types of bugs, the sound of bones breaking and string instruments that have dramatic and somber tones. My mind specifically went to Marvel’s spiderman 2,2023 as there is a little robot spider that you play as in one of the missions, and the little walking sounds are what a sound I imagine our film would have. This sound would be used to give hints about the bug obsession like littles queues that if u listen closely to the background will just like how the main character always has his obsession in the back of his mind.

Marvel’s spiderman 2,2023.In this mission, a little spider robot is used and the sound design for this robot are mixed of robotic and spider sounds.

When the obsession becomes too much it would sound like insects are crawling everywhere not letting the main character think anything else because they are too loud to be ignored, very similar to The Mummy,1999 ride in Universal Orlando.

Cicadas

Something important is that Cicadas are sound-producing insects, which means they produce loud rhythmic noises. These noises are quite distinguishable from any other insect and it's one of the main features that people know about the Cicadas. These rhythmic sounds can be loud specially when cicadas are in groups. They are very overpowering and exactly what I'm looking for.

This is a video of a singular Cicada creating the rhythmic sound

While going through videos of cicada, I found this video that explain some general things like the life cycle of a cicada but it also explains two the sound is made which is very interesting. Similar to almost a Guiro Latin percussion instruments, cicadas have tiny ridges called Timbles  that when they moved back in forth it creates the sound. 

This is a Guiro, a traditional Latin instrument that use a little stick to rub the ridges which create a sound kind of similar to the Cicadas.

Respect every role

Some people think very little about some job in film production, not a lot of thought is given about sound or editing. It can be disheartening to work in a project where it doesn't feel like the role I have is respected and treated as seriously as director or cinematographer. It can destroy motivation and creativity. Respecting other people's crafts is so important and the fact that our director took time to talk to me about sound design in general and in our film made me excited to be part of this production.