Artifact 2 - Audio for Multimedia

Wall-E Post Production

Choosing a Clip:

My approach to finding a clip that I would like to work on was finding one that I’d find entertaining enough to work truly hard on, so I started by looking at old Disney/Pixar clips that I had known from my childhood. I ended up settling on an early scene from the 2008 film Wall-E in which the protagonist robot comes back to his base from a trip scouring his barren world, he then proceeds to tidy up which makes space for creating many different amazing sounds.

The Task:

I was tasked with creating a post-production video clip either from a film or game. The clip should be roughly 2 minutes 30 seconds long and should be approved by my lecturer. I was also required to provide a mood board via Padlet for this project.

Planning Stage:

Firstly, in order to plan for this clip I created a Padlet in which I described my clip in detail, provided inspiration for what I’ll be creating in post-production and the time it will take to complete this artifact.

Also part of the planning stage I had to get an idea of how I would make these sounds, so I had a look at the items that we have for foley work in the college, of which I chose to use most of the metal objects, some of the sandpit for the start of the clip and even some equipment from other degrees that are studied within the college such as a vice from the woodwork section. I also took some pre-recorded clips from the large database of copyright free audio files on SoundQ.

My Approach:

Starting my foley work with the first section of the clip in which our protagonist Wall-E is driving through the desert to his home base I used a rolled a metal cog through the sand pit that we have available at the college for foley work, this was able to accurately create the sound that I’d imagine Wall-Es tracks would make in the sandy environment he was traveling through. I then blended this sound with a copyright free audio recording of a tank traveling to audibly convince the weight of Wall-E and a recording of a motorised toy to act as the robots motorised wheels sound.

Once Wall-E reached his base, creating the sound of his large hangar door opening was a challenge that I was ready for. Through trial and error with foley techniques with old tool boxes and metal sheets I was able to create the sound through dropping the metallic tool box on the ground, captured with the Rode NTG2 and into Ableton I was able to lower the pitch of the audio file providing it with some depth, mixing it with an 808 kick also provided the sound with the weight that it deserves.

Modifying clips by pitch shifting, adjusting speed or reversing them was a common theme throughout this whole process as it caused me to think out of the box of my usually musical background and find ways in which I can create sounds that aren’t readily available to me, whether that be through foley or morphing SoundQ samples into my own.

The part of this project I enjoyed the most and gave the video I created the most character is the voice I added for the robot as it moves through the clip and reacts to its environment. I created this voice through firstly watching the clip and gauging when Wall-E would possibly make a sound, I then recorded my voice making high pitched noises to what I thought our robot would sound like before processing it with many effects such as chorus, distortion, saturation and many more found in the images below. This was the sound that took the most effort and processing to make but I think it was completely worth it as it gave the clip a human quality that it would’ve been missing.

Once I was happy with my collection of sounds I began panning the sounds within the clip to match the movements that happen on screen. Good examples of this are the movement of Wall-E going fully across the screen from left to right from which I hard panned the movement sounds from left to right and the movement of the bug at the end which swiftly moves around the screen and I follow this with panning the bugs movement noises in unison.  

Overall, this is a project that initially put me out of my comfort zone yet became very enjoyable once I was familiar with the techniques that were necessary to produce what I have created.