Sound Design - Mini Season 2

Sound Design for New Dawn Mini Season 2

Raising the bar.

When I originally conceived the idea of New Dawn, I knew that one of my primary aims was to create something with attention to detail in terms of music and the soundscape.

Mini season 1 tested the idea and I am not unhappy with the results. However, it was the first run as such and there was a large learning curve in terms sourcing what I need. This ranged from sourcing sfx and music, to the script writing and managing the recordings provided, organising the edit and the plugins that I needed to achieve my aims for the editing software – in this case Reaper. I touched on my most used plugins in a previous piece, which you can find here
The Art of Sound Design

“For the listener when the episode finally releases, I hope that they only hear the ‘one’ piece of music and the changes as a natural progression with movement and location. In fact, I hope they just experience the movement of Nick from main club to the back-office room.”

Image by Terry Papoulias from Pixabay

Working on mini season 2 there are a lot more knowns. Even some basics such as sorting out the workflow and filing of items for ease of access when needed has made a massive difference. Being slightly more organised and a little savvier, and with all the tools I need at hand it has given me the leeway to start to try and improve the production.

Mini season 2 ‘Blood Rain’ is set in a fictional Washington EDM night club scene. The seasons scenes are also predominantly set in and around a specific club night encompassing two out of the four episodes. I knew from conception that I wanted to really capture the feel of a club night with the music being an important part of this and to act as the backdrop to the investigative horror of the storyline. This was to include the music and the crowd ambience along with very specific scenes where we meet the main characters.

That brings us to this short scene for which an audio sample and screen capture are included.

The scene follows Nick (event manager) after a confrontation with an FBI agent. As far as he is concerned the agent is now dead and he is running to his friend and the protagonist of this series to inform him that they need to get the hell out of there.

At the outset I envisioned two distinct environments – the corridor and the back room.

However, as I started to introduce the music, sfx and the dialogue I realised that for this scene there were four transitions if it were to be believable.

Firstly, the main club, then the transition to the corridor, the corridor and finally the back room. To achieve this the music track is copied three times. The first with a wide stereo field to capture the sound within the main body of the club. The second and third copies providing the corridor transition and finally the back room. Copies two and three play as we transition to the corridor, slightly offset and with different spatial effects. Both have reverb applied to introduce the echo of the corridor and the back room. The second track has a slightly narrower stereo field than the main club track but still retains a feel for the main club sound. The third in comparison has a very narrow stereo field to give the feel of the music now being very dircetional as though through the door into the corridor. The second and third copies also have varying levels of EQ to start to remove the high-end frequencies lost through doors and walls as we move further and further away from the main club environment. As we transition down the hallway the music level diminishes and once the back-office door closes behind Nick only the third copy of the music is playing to give the impression of music leaking only through the walls and door and is muddier and at a quieter level then previously.

Tracks 21 - 23 The same piece of music duplicated to facilitate the environment changes.

For the listener when the episode finally releases, I hope that they only hear the ‘one’ piece of music and the changes as a natural progression with movement and location. In fact, I hope they just experience the movement of Nick from main club to the back-office room.

For me I hope it is the beginning of the next level of sound production for New Dawn. In the first series I would have probably been happy to just have two changes in the sound of the music to create this transition scene, and that would have worked. For Blood Rain episode 6, there are four changes in spatial effects for the short scene to just lift the sound design that little higher, and I hope to pay the same attention to detail for the entire mini-series.

For the listener it should all be transparent and that is how it should be.

You can hear the section of audio below.

As always, my undying thanks to those that cheer me on and those that give their time and effort to be a part of New Dawn.