Background
Both of my grandmothers experienced the violence of WWII firsthand. My Nanny (maternal grandmother) in Liverpool, England while my Grandma (paternal grandmother) experienced it in Kobe, Japan. Growing up I heard stories of what it was like to experience bomb raids and rations — the fear that comes from both the action and anticipation. Although both were on either side of the war neither of them blamed other countries, the takeaway they wanted to impart was that no one wins in war not the winners not the losers. The worst outcome we could have as man is to wage war.
Soundscape
One of the stories that felt visceral to me as a kid, was my grandma's account of escaping a burning hospital that had been bombed when she was a teenager. As a kid I couldn't relate to the biggr picture of her WWII accounts, but this one story immediately placed me in the fear she must have felt.
Harkening to the foley artists of the 1930's (used for radio segments), this soundscape combines old foley techniques such as cracking frozen celery for branch breaking and mixes them with new foley techniques such as digital pitch and reverb manipulation. Recreating my grandma's memory through learning the story-telling techniques of the time period, I hope to give the listener the same visceral experience I had as a kid when listening to this story, all while paying an omage to the time.
Details of Process
One thing important to represent with this project is the art of foley. Although the sirens (which I wanted to be authentic to the time) were found tracks from soundbible.com, everything else was either recorded or re-created by me. The soundscape begins with a phone interview with my grandmother, recorded with a x/y directional mic. In order to give ambience and smoothly transition to the memory portion of the track, I have a recording of a hospital lobby in the background ( also recorded with the x/y directional mic, internal to the Zoom recorder ) which slowly fades in as my grandmother’s track fades out.
To add more depth to this piece, I organized my working file into close, mid, and distant sounds from the viewer. As my grandmother’s track fades out footfalls that have added reverb and time shifts, pan left to right and then in another track right to left. These tracks are higher in volume and were recorded closer to the mic to add a foreground to the hospital ambience.
As the piece progresses I add the first moment of discord, the track of the air bomb siren. In the first siren track I added reverb and lowered the high cut frequency to muffle the sound and give it a sense of incredible distance. In the track below, I added another siren to sound midway through the first. This siren has minimal reverb and was panned more to the right of the listener to give a more immediate sound. From there I began to add the bombing sound effects. The first I treated similarly to the first siren, cutting its high frequencies, lowering its volume, and giving it reverb all in order for it to sound distant. The second I treated similarly to the second siren track. Last but not least, at a low volume panned slightly to the right, is the sound of a helicopter made through spraying condensed air at a ceiling fan ( with a shotgun condenser mic) and then upping the tempo in ProTools. Having laid out a solid foundation, I began to add the effects that would seem more immediate to the listener, the effects within the hospital room.
First, I added the sound of creaking and breaking wood. These sounds were made by recording the snapping of frozen celery and the peeling of frozen lettuce with the shotgun condenser mic. I then lowered their pitch, reduced their speed, and added reverb to complete the transformation in Pro Tools. Again to add a more encompassing soundscape, the breaking/ snapping wood sounds vary in volume and panning.
On top of these tracks I added the slow crackling sound of burning wood. This I made by recording with the shotgun condenser mic, the slow crumbling of saltine crackers in a ziplock bag. The sound specifically, is not the actual crumbling of the bag but the sound of the crackers after I released my hold on the bag. To give more fullness to the track, these sounds were not panned but remained a constant and continuous sound in the background.
At this point I wanted to add more tension to the piece so I added the sounds of heavy breathing ( recorded with a shotgun condenser mic ), the sounds of blood rushing ( recorded by putting shotgun condenser mic in mouth ), and the sound of shuffling glass ( recorded by taking a boot and stepping on/shuffling through glass on a wooden surface with a shotgun condenser mic ). From the sounds mentioned above, the blood rushing sound is at a low volume in the background of the piece which fades in and out; the heavy breathing is cut and overlayed to pick up tempo, and the shuffling glass is distorted with reverb and pitch shifted to give a more explosive sound.
Finally to tie everything together, every track begins to fade out in a stair-step pattern, leaving the sirens to be the last to go, and the narration provided by my grandmother continues until a resolve.
