The Sounds of Creative Thinking
To be successful at video editing, you have to be proficient at working with sound. Video and audio work together to charm your eyes and ears, and bad audio can kill your video. I have a tiny bit of experience recording and modifying my own sounds, but for the most part I'm skilled in combining an editing existing audio in a program called Audacity. From doing sound design for theatre productions to shaping videos around just audio, I've worked with audio as long as I've worked with video.
Sounds of Theatre
In 2018, I had the honor of designing sound for the entirety of Bellarmine's International 10-Minute Play Festival. This consisted of six completely different short plays, and it was a fun challenge coming up with unique sounds for all of them! Below are some samples from the plays.
The Ultimate Showdown but with sound effects instead
of the song
This Bellarmine video assignment dictated that I take a famous video, erase the audio, and put in my own audio. This viral YouTube video was originally a song, having no audio except the music. Removing the music left A LOT of sound effects to find, as this is a very chaotic video. This video was edited in GarageBand to give me more freedom to edit audio.
WARNING: Cartoon violence
Crossing
This play was about a pregnant, elderly Jamaican woman who's driving her son crazy by arguing outside of the car between opposite sides of the highway. I wanted to have fun with the sounds here because the play was intended to be comical.
Fighting Past In Vain Attempt To Fix Mistakes
This play featured teenagers experimenting with a futuristic type of VR gaming, which turns into a horrific situation. I wanted both video game types of sounds and horror elements, and in some cases I combined both.
Defenders of the Tender Gender Bender
This play followed a couple who had to carefully explain the delicate situation their child was in by being intersex. In this one, I just needed to provide the intro and outro music. I went with childlike music, lullabies really.
The Good Wife
In this humorous play, an older lady talks about her husband's newfound discovery that he likes to cross-dress. By the end of it, she realizes that although she doesn't get it, she just cares he's happy. This called for music that was upbeat to match the woman's tone, as well as sounds around the house.
Grilling the Octopus
This play took place outdoors on a nice, summer evening. The play was described as a game of cat and mouse between a couple on a date as they tango. It gave me the best chance to create a soundscape that would last the entire play. It included outdoor sounds and, since the setting was across from a club, the distant sounds of music.
Raghead
This play approached the awkward scenario of a blind date between a Muslim woman and a bigoted man. This allowed another opportunity for a soundscape, this time in the form of the sounds of a restaurant.
Fragmented Nightmares
This Bellarmine sound/video assignment was to record my own sounds, modify them in any way, and THEN add video to fit the sound. This project is the epitome of designing video around sound, and it wasn't new to me because oftentimes my videos start out as audio. For my soundscape, I slowed down and distorted sounds I recorded such as a toilet flushing to create something disturbing. The video became a showcase of five horror stories that progressed with the sounds.
GarageBand
I also worked with GarageBand to create my own music. Below is a sample song I made as a project.