Zenith

What is Zenith?

Freestyle’s Zenith project is the final senior project for seniors. We have total free reign to deign our own projects with a few requirements based on our elective class. This means that no one student’s project will be the same. “Zenith” means the point at which something is at the peak of its power or success. This project is called that because it is supposed to represent the peak of our knowledge and skills at freestyle before we leave.

My Zenith Project

My Zenith Project is going to be focused on foley production and sound design. The final product will be a 2 movie clips from Gravity and Dunkirk where every sound was made and edited by me. None of the original audio is used, from wind sounds and footsteps, to aircraft sounds and gunfire, all of it will be made and edited by me. The only exception will be the music.

I’m specifically interested in this project, because every time I’ve made a video/film, the sound design is the step that always feels like it brings everything together. In my experience, adding in the sound design is a huge factor in immersing the viewer and bringing out the emotion in a scene. However, I’ve always found my sound effects online, and I am interested in experimenting with making my own sounds.

This Zenith project is a new challenge for me because I have never made foley before/made my own sound effects. Using a clip from a movie will give me a harder challenge because there’ll be many unorthodox sounds that cannot be recorded using the actual source of the sound, forcing me to get creative. For example, I’ll have to find a way to recreate the sound of an explosion, or a bullet whizzing by.

For my Film Production Class, I will use the pre-production skill of script lining in order to lay out what sounds I will need to make. This will help me plan out what items I will need to find beforehand in order to experiment with making the sound I’m going for. For the production phase of the project, I will use what I’ve learned about the boom mic and audio recorder to capture clean audio for the final edit. In the post-production phase of the project, I want to edit in 5.1 surround sound, which we learned in class, allowing me to add more realism to the scene.

Process

Choosing Scenes

The first step in my process was to decide on what movie clips I wanted to do the sound for. I ended up searching on YouTube for movie clips from the movies I wanted to do. I eventually landed up on the scene from Gravity where the character is trapped in a burning spacecraft, and the scene from Dunkirk where the soldiers are bombed for the first time.

Still image from the chosen scene in Gravity

Still image from the chosen scene in Dunkirk

These images show the elements I was hoping to experiment with in the sound design: Fire and plane sounds.

Planning + Research

The next step was to plan out how I was going to make each sound. I did some research online to find other people who have made similar sounds themselves before. I put all my brainstormed ideas on how each one could be made into a document.

Sound planning for Gravity scene

Sound planning for Dunkirk scene

Gathering Foley

Before I could start editing, I needed the foley recordings. I used my planning as well as finding random objects in my house to use for the sounds in the scenes.

How I created the crinkling fire sounds in Gravity

How I created the falling sand sounds in Dunkirk

Editing

The editing process took the longest out of anything. I had to place the time the foley recordings to match the scene but also edit the sounds to match what you would expect to hear on screen. I used Premiere Pro for all the editing.

Editing timeline for the Gravity clip

Editing timeline for the Dunkirk clip

They both took around 15-20 hours of editing each. In the end I am very happy with how they both turned out, even the explosions in Dunkirk which I initially was struggling with.

Final Result

A part of the project was also a presentation showing off our work to other kids at Freestyle.