Quail Audio Editing

Sound Design for Minecraft Animations

Last week I saw a casting call that needed characters for a Minecraft (a video game) animation series. I love Minecraft and wanted to be involved, but there weren't any characters my age for me to audition.

So I messaged the host of the casting call and asked if he'd want any help with the audio. He messaged me back, and to skip some other chat that wasn't important, and he gave me a test.

He sent me a short, second long animation, and asked me if I could create a sound for it. So, I sent him a sound that would probably match the video. When I sent it, he said it didn't sound just right. Then I sent him a new one. He thought it was great! This is the final project:

That little bit of sound took around five sound effects! The small particle shard sounds were glass being cracked by hand! After I got the glass audio (I have a big library of sound effects), I sped it up and changed the pitch lower, as if it were a bunch of glass moving around. Then I added some wind swishes as the particles moved, to give it the sense of speed, and the small explosion, in the beginning, was a bomb blowing up, so I shortened it so it wouldn't be as intense. I also used a few other small sound effects, but that would be too long and too hard to explain.

Sound Designing for TCE

In my previous post, I wrote that I auditioned for a project that needed a sound designer. Well, There's still no feedback from that (even though I was supposed to find out if I was picked or not a week ago), but a few days after I auditioned, I asked the director of TCE (the channel I voice act for) if he needed me to do any more voices. He said it'll be a while until more lines for me come in, but if I'm interested, I could script write or SOUND DESIGN (did you see that he said SOUND DESIGN??? Right over there!!). Maybe I got a little carried away... Anyways, I said I would do it, and he gave me a choice of 2 different projects I can start on! Either Darth Vader, or The Trigger. I told him I could do The Trigger, but he should have some back up in case I don't do it right. Then, he gave me a LOT of really cool sound effects! After working on it for a few days, I asked him what the deadline was. He said a few months. Then I knew I didn't have to worry too much.

The way I approached putting in sound is by making sure it wasn't too loud, and I didn't want it to overwhelm the narration because this isn't a complete audio drama. If I were to put sounds throughout the whole story nonstop, it would make it sound like the narrator was actually there, and not describing it.

Here's a small clip of the sound effects I put with a piece of the story:

Auditioning For Casting Call: Dandelion

I recently auditioned for a part of a sound engineer in a casting call called "Dandelion" - Student Short Film. There were 2 other auditions, and they were really good! What the person needed was someone to put together sound effects for a 2-minute short video. Though it's not paid, I thought I would audition for this because I like to put together sound effects sometimes and that if I get chosen, it would be a good experience for me, since I usually do voice acting and audio editing, and it's really short, so I wouldn't feel too pressured for a big project like that.

This was my audition:

Here's the link to the casting call: "Dandelion" - Student Short Film

What I Wish Adobe Audition Had

Sometimes I think, what if Au had... This. If it had the things I think it should have, editing could be more than twice as fast. But of course, that would be pretty hard to make. But the things I had in mind are these:

  • Make it so that if you select, for example, the word "um", and somehow process it throughout the episode (somewhat like the noise reduction effect), then select all the "um"s it can find, I could then delete it. But I can see an issue where if it selected all the "um"s, it could get mixed up with another word like "from", thinking the "om" from "from" would think it was an "um".
  • Improve the noise reduction effect so that when it clears out the background noise, it can also take out the noise (as in white noise in the background) from the parts where the guest and or the host are speaking.
  • This one isn't actually for editing, but recording (and Au might already have this option): be able to control the gain of the mic while recording.