Arrival (2016) Scene Emulation

 

Click title to see video (YouTube Link)

ARRIVAL (2016) SCENE EMULATION: First Contact Scene

Accompanying Score: First Encounter by Johann Johannsson (starts at 2:10 in SCENE)

Project started August 16, finished September 14

 

Documenting my thought process:

How do I trim clips in Pro Tools? This is so hard. I miss Logic.

Figured out how to trim clips. Thank you, “Pro Tools For Dummies.”

Lined up the score with the scene’s audio track. The scene starts at 2:10 in the score.

Created sound map (below).

There’s a canary. I’m Canary. Spooky.

These heptapod noises are gonna be hard to make.

Watched the film commentary with the sound designers. Went for “sacred” and “intimidating.” The heptapods’ bodies are chamberlike (no mouth), thinking about the physical components of their body that makes noise. Resonance. Recorded native New Zealand birds, pitched down. Used bagpipes, digeridoos, breathing through it. Rice paper to construct a lung. Gurgling. Raspy. Pro Tools commit function. Communication at the heart of it. No electronic/mechanical/engine sounds for heptapods, only organic/natural. Wind, tension, processed wind sounds, natural sources. Breathing in the hazmat claustrophobic, visually blurred, kind of a bubble when mixing.

Ideas for heptapod sounds: Air conditioner? Washing machine? / Boingy door stop slowed down? Ruler on the edge of the table / Latch on toolbox for equipment

Putting the windscreen on for the breaths helps TREMENDOUSLY.

Getting the dialogue and breaths for Louise: figured out how to do loop recording. Ctrl click to open playlist to review takes (Selector tool, not grab hand).

Start + Up/Down changes track size

Ctrl + E will split a track in 2 at the selection when using the Selection Tool

Something I’ve done in other projects is pan the original track to the left and my emulation track to the right to be able to hear the difference in timing and adjust it if it’s off. I did this with applying the “Bird Clips” since the original tweets didn’t show up in the waveform.

Recorded springs and ruler sounds, imported them to Pro Tools, cut them up, and am going to start messing with them. I think that recreating the sounds will be incredibly hard and nigh impossible, so I’m going to create my own idea of the heptapod sounds based off the description from the commentary.

Figured out how to fix the delay plug and its weird problems with timing.

The scene takes place in a “cave” (well, an alien spaceship, but same idea). The design of the ship makes me feel like sounds would bounce off the walls kind of harshly (inorganic, metallic(?) material, sturdy for traveling). Boost high frequencies and add a little bit of a delay to everything.

I’ve sent 6 tracks to Bus 1-2, then created an Aux track with Bus 1-2 as input and HDAdStrn12 as Output (the input for the tracks sent to Bus 1-2) to create the “cave” effect, so I don’t have to apply it 6 times.

The Alien Sounds still sound pretty metallic to me, but I think I bit off more than I can chew for the first project I did on Pro Tools. I’m going to focus on finishing the other elements and get this done!

Button “Insertion Follows Playback” lets the DAW start at the same place when you stopped. I had been getting annoyed by how I’d pause and lose the timestamp of the sound I was trying to find.

My bus isn’t working now. The sound is coming out, but not when I solo the aux track (it worked yesterday).

Not going to do the radio. Although I’m sure I could look up effects/tutorials on how to make a recording sound like it’s coming from a radio, I can’t understand what it’s saying to recreate it, and it isn’t relevant or prevalent.

 

 

 

ALIEN EFFECTS NOTES:

Track 1 - Spring: from pulling on a spring on a garage door

                Effects: D-Verb, with decay and diffusion; Pitch II, played with L&R

Track 2 - Ruler: from a metal ruler wobbling on the end of a table

                Effects: D-Verb, with decay and diffusion; Pitch II, -7 semitones

Track 3 - Wawa: from a metal ruler wobbling on the end of a table

                Effects: D-Verb, with HF Cut and LP Filter and some diffusion; Pitch II, delay, feedback, LPF

Track 4 - Buzz: from lightly pulling on spring on a garage door

                Effects: EQ, cut the highs out and boosted mids/lows

 

Done in Pro Tools. All sounds except bird recorded by me. Bird sounds used under Creative Commons 0 (https://freesound.org/people/Adam_N/sounds/164489/). The project was to recreate all of the sounds of a film scene. I recorded ADR (Automated Dialog Replacement), footsteps, and spot effects specifically for this clip. Posted under Fair Use.