The Classical Elements: Adding Sound

This is my final product with sound:

Adding sound was actually one of the bits I liked most about this project. It was definitely challenging trying to find the sound for my piece, but when I did and I started to see my animation come to life I was really pleased. 

First off, I wanted a backing track throughout my whole piece in which I could fade in and fade out in various places, depending on if I needed to or not. I immediately thought of 'Soundcloud', but I coincidentally came across the youtube audio library where there is literally a bank of music and sound effects which you can use for free:

I ended up choosing one named 'Dog Walk', however despite its name I think worked well to introduce and end my animation. I then thought that it seemed that something was missing with just this backing track. Even though I knew I was adding sound effects, I felt like it didn't have enough ambience or just in general I wasn't happy with it. So instead whilst I had been browsing fire crackling noises, picked one which lasted quite long so that I could have it on as well as the back track, but quieten it down so that it isn't overpowering. I think this worked alright.

Then I wanted to focus on the sound effects. I needed to find a gasp, but after much searching I felt like they were all too dramatic and were not what I was looking for. So I actually found a clip from 'Coraline' on youtube and took a gasp she makes for my match stick woman. I then needed a scream, which was easy enough to find but none of them lasted as long as 2-3 seconds which is how long my match stick character screams for. So what I did was I took a really high pitched scream that I thought would suit the animation, then I slowed the speed so that it would last longer, and then also in Premiere I added a grain so that the pitch would be higher because when you slow audio down the pitch gets lower. Her scream sounded more natural and therefore I left it at that.

Lastly I needed the perfect matchstick ignition for when my matchstick characters kiss. I searched everywhere for one and couldn't find the right one. I even recording my own but when I did I could catch the cripsiness of the crackle for when the match sticks initially set alight. I ended up coming across on youtube a community called 'ASMR' where they use extremely high tech microphones to record sounds. One youtuber did a video on fire and ice, and the sound was perfect so I did a youtube to mp3 conversion and used that.

Since I probably won't be uploading my video to youtube I think I do alright for using my audio for educational purposes, where as if I were to upload it, I would definitely ask the youtubers permission to use their work. Overall I think my audio is alright and is synchronised enough to match the images.