Final Audio Walk

For the Sound Assignment, our group made an audio walk recording of a cell phone conversation between our fictional protagonist, Sarah, and her boyfriend, Jim. She travels through York University’s underground tunnels late at night using Jim’s directions to avoid getting lost. In this suspenseful thriller, Sarah hears noises which lead her to believe she is being followed. The audio is entirely from Sarah’s perspective, so students are encouraged to hold their cell phones to their right ear to induce an immersive quality. The audio track was designed to make participators in the audio walk feel the same suspense as Sarah. Consider a film being shot entirely through the perspective of the main character.

The mood and atmosphere is created through the use of dramatic voice acting and realistic sound effects, many of which were recorded at the same locations as those featured within the audio. The Audio Walk is meant to be followed by the audience at the same pace as Sarah, to fully relive her experience in the tunnels.

The walk begins on a staircase beneath the Ross Building, and continues through the tunnels, twisting and turning until the students reach the staircase to the Stacie Library.  Some of the techniques used to enhance the story and audio were echoes, phone effects, static, and making use of dual audio channels. The audio walk concludes with the revealing of the stalker’s identity. What may first appear as innocent intentions escalates to an exciting climax whereby the ending is left open-ended.

The recording directly engages with the audience to make them feel like the character Sarah and have them relive that experience. In that sense, it can be a lot more frightening than watching a film in the comfort of your own home – especially if the walk is performed alone and after 11PM as done by Sarah. The target audience is anyone who enjoys suspense/thriller/horror films or stories, but would like to be immersed in the experience.

Group: Alex K, Alex O, Josh Watson
Voice Actors: Sarah C. (Theatre program at York), Alex K, and Spencer K.

http://dm.finearts.yorku.ca/~aornat/sound/Audiowalk.mp3 : MP3
http://dm.finearts.yorku.ca/~aornat/sound/Audiowalk.aup : Audacity File
http://dm.finearts.yorku.ca/~aornat/sound/sourcefiles/sourcefiles.zip : Source Files
http://dm.finearts.yorku.ca/aornat/sound/map.jpg : Map

Sound Rough

Some [really] rough recordings completed after a minor setback. Just some general, creepy, industrial-like sounds of a style we hope to recreate in the final audio file. Uncanny ambience, echoed footsteps, and heavy metal doors are an effective means of creating a setting reminiscent of a horror film.

http://dm.finearts.yorku.ca/~aornat/filedump/rec1.zip

Lecture Room Ambiance

Entering the room at the start of class you hear whispering voices and pages turning as students open their books. Every few seconds you hear the door fly open as more students walk in. Every once and a while in the first 10 minutes you hear the apple or windows start up noise as computer begin to boot up. You start getting pumped for class once you hear the door open and hear Stedman tapping away at the mic to see if we can hear him. The lecture begins and you can hear people typing away as professor Stedman starts his slides. Every couple slides there is audio file sor youtube videos. As they play, you can hear students laugh and chitter chatter about the subject and joke about it. There is usually the few students who choose to whisper throughout the entire time, it gets very annoying. As i look around, i can hear typing as if people are typing notes, and then you look closer, and 60% of them are on Facebook.

Last 5 mins of class, you can hear students start to fidget and get excited that class is almost done. Papers ruffling, binders shutting, bags zipping, all these noising telling you class is almost over. Once the teacher has finished, he said and class is done, and all at once there is this huge noise of chairs being pushed back and students footsteps down the stairs. Lastly, the door flies open over and over until the room is empty and silent as the prof cleans up and leaves.

Sound Assignment Idea!

For the sound assignment, my group came up with the idea of leading the class through a recording (or series of recordings), which depict the thrilling story of a person or pair of people making their way through a series of tunnels (rather, underground tunnels) in their attempt to escape from some pursuing threat. We’re not yet quite sure what the threat will be, but we were considering taking a more comic approach and having a zombie chase our victims. The recording would of course feature classic zombie-horror vocals, a horrified narrator (owner of the “found” recording), and background music, which would help set the mood. Having the ‘tour’ featured underground would allow us to experiment with various audio effects (echoes and fades) and different types of sound sources. We also plan to explore a wide variety of audio editing techniques, and hope that our theme is flexible in that it gives us much freedom in our approach.

The tour will take place in an underground tunnel linking the Ross building to the Chemistry building. It’s a long walk with many twists and turns, so we recommend students stay close to the group to avoid being lost.

Here are some top-notch photos of some of the hallways students will be passing through: