Republic Hall, hallway
My friend was describing the food at a German restaurant that she went to the day before. I enjoyed the way she emphasized certain words or syllables in order to convey what the food was like. Her voice is naturally smooth but the jolts in her speech make her enthusiasm evident. Unfortunately, I cut the clip off right before she finished her sentence.
1- Wednesday April 10, around 7:30pm (or whenever it began to downpour), intramural fields
2- Girls screaming and shouting to each other, scrambling to the cars; another car drives by humming through the rain
3- Thunder rolls loudly and rain hits the metal face of the scoreboard for the softball field.
4- Rain pours down all around and on me, pitter-pattering, slapping and clapping against the ground; my cleats crunch on the ground
5- The sound activity is low, but the sound level is a medium, spiking high with each crack of thunder
6- Calming
7- Rain, footsteps, thunder
1. My Dorm room, 5pm Thursday
2. a car horn, the wind blowing, faint voices, what sound like an airplane flying by far away
3. the shower in the bathroom across the hall, furniture moving on the floor above me, the elevator dinging and doors opening and closing, wing blowing
4. my refrigerator humming, the heater, myself breathing
5. Low volume but lots of activity
6. Enclosed
7. the refrigerator, doors closing, the elevator
1- 4/11/13 11:45 PM, Alliance Hall
2- Identify and list the sounds farthest away from you: birds chirping outside the open window, cars driving by
3- Identify and list the sounds at a medium range from you: People running through the hallway, someone talking loudly on the phone outside my door, someone in the hallway laughing so hard they are practically cackling
4- Identify and list the sounds closest to you: my fan whirring on high, sleep songs lightly playing on myipod
5- Describe the general sound level and amount of sound activity- Far too high for 11:45 at night
6- Assign a one word description to the “sound environment”. Annoying
7- Select and list 3 sounds which are essential to the sound environment: Person talking on phone, person cackling, birds chirping
Location: 13th Floor Lounge of Enterprise Dormitory Hall — April 11th, 2013, 10:15 pm
Sounds Heard: This is a longer clip than usual, but I wanted to record the entire warm-up. My improv troupe is in tech week for a show, and we have late night rehearsals at which we first warm up by taking turns sharing a story while leading a group stretch. I made the mistake of asking my troupe if I could record them beforehand, so they can at first be heard making jokes about it, while the troupe leader Will tries to rein in their focus. We then take turns telling stories. At various points (usually at the start of a new stretch), moaning and groaning can be heard when the story-telling troupe member attempts a particularly difficult stretch. You can also hear from time to time (like during Annie’s cantaloupe story) the volume of the storyteller’s voice increasing as he or she moves to the floor and closer to my phone for a stretch.
1: Saturday, April 6, 2013, 12:19 pm, 31 W 19th St, 12th Floor, Studio B
2: Identify and list the sounds farthest away from you.
I’m in a studio at the New York Film Academy with my BFA Performance class, and we’re working on cold reads. The scene we’ve been given is a typical, post-kidnapping interrogation from an NCIS-style crime show. Megan is playing a badly beaten, psychologically rattled prostitute whose best friend has gone missing, and Mary is playing the empathetic investigator who sits said prostitute down to ask a few questions. The scene is very intense, so the fact that the Film Academy is hosting children’s auditions for some commercial or other right and the queue has formed right outside the studio door is quite inopportune. The farthest noises that we can hear are those of the congregated seven, eight, nine and ten year olds grumbling and protesting at their momagers’ overhandling. The chatter outside the door, near which the orchestrators of the event have stupidly placed the sign-in table, reaches a dull roar while our camera is rolling, with one of the girls telling her mom she has to “go tinkie again” and one of the moms telling her daughter that if she fusses with her headband again, she’s going home.
3: Identify and list the sounds at a medium range from you.
At the far side of the room, away from the door, Megan and Mary perform their cold read. The instructor Omar stopped the pair to attempt the scene before Megan and Mary multiple times to tell them to reduce their volume. He insisted that, with mic’ing practices, the modern convention for filming is contrary to that of stage acting in that scenes are performed at very, very low volume. For this reason, Mary in particular is almost entirely inaudible. We can see her lips moving, but the most that comes out at this distance mumbles of varying inflection.
4: Identify and list the sounds closest to you (– you can include internal sounds if noticed or relevant).
At medium range, my class watches Megan and Mary from a section of plastic seats that creak sporadically as we shift. We try to stay quiet for filming, but the intensely low volume of the scene makes our every sniffle and paper rustle hyperaudible. The interesting thing about the quiet of the scene is that it so limits the range of audiblity and demands such aural attention that you feel like you’re zoomed in for a close-up, even while watching fifteen feet away.
5: Describe the general sound level and amount of sound activity.
The dichotomy of the sound environment, in which the lowest-volume sonic activity demands the most attention and the highest-volume (outside the door) must be ignored, is very interestingly inverted. The disparity in sound level is great, but the closed door between the larger sounds and me allows me to will myself to tune them out.
6: Assign a one-word description to the “sound environment”.
“Multidirectional”
7: Select and list 3 sounds that are essential to the sound environment. Note: you need to try and figure out what sounds make up this environment and which of those sounds need to be there for the feeling of the environment to stay intact.
Mary’s murmuring and the restrained sounds of my class trying to limit our own noise level (resulting in stifled coughs and abruptly ended creaking noises) creates a sonic picture of a film set. The noise outside is so coincidental and disruptive that it doesn’t feel in keeping with this specific concept; nevertheless, it is part and parcel to the kooky sound environment that I actually experienced.
1. 4/10 – 8:46 PM – Studio
2. Someone yelling down the hall, music from Carrie rehearsal drifting upstairs
3. Nic tapping his pencil, the music playing over the speakers
4. Pouring rain and incredibly loud thunder
5. The general sound level was very high because of the storm. The amount of sound activity is relatively low. There are only three people in the studio, and most of the noise is either coming from outside or downstairs so it is very minimal.
6. Powerful
7. The thunder, the rain, the yelling
